


sumerlang

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [121]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Rise of the Guardians Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autumn, Childhood Sweethearts, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Pining, Reunions, Spring, Summer, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 23:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14507679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: Eventually, however, and almost imperceptibly, as the earth turned the weather began to change, and though Merlin had nothing to do with it—though he could not even admit to everwantingit—there began to appear patches of a dear, familiar blue amidst the murk, and the worst of the ice slowly began to thaw.An epilogue towintercearig.





	sumerlang

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arthur_pendragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_pendragon/gifts).



> For AP. Thank you for all the wonderful and entertaining comments over the past few days. Your reaction to wintercearig in particular made me cry, and I felt compelled to set the story straight. I wrote most of this at 2am last night so it's a bit rough, but I hope it provides the happy ending these two so richly deserve.

 

The winter was hard that year. Unprecedented storms battered the coast, and blizzards swept inland over the unprotected countryside, killing livestock and freezing the rivers in their beds. For the first time in over a hundred years, it was possible to walk from one side of the Thames to the other on foot, and for several days together London traffic ground to a halt as the roads became impassable, the city’s busiest highways too densely clogged with snow.

 

Through it all, Merlin sat curled on the roof of Arthur’s farmhouse, unmoving. He had, at least on the surface, aged in the same way that Arthur had, his once dark hair now streaked the colour of the frost that spread out beneath his fingertips, a silvery-white beard flowing from his chin down to his navel. Unlike Arthur, however, Merlin’s age was an illusion that could be sloughed off at will, the way the earth would eventually shrug off her winter coat and become green again. Unlike Arthur, Merlin would never have to grumble his way through the pain of aching bones and rheumatism, or suffer the indignity of winter colds that lingered and turned into pneumonia.

 

Unlike Arthur, Merlin would never die.

 

It had been Morgana’s daughter who broke the news to him. Of all Morgana’s children, only Freya continued to believe in Merlin well into adulthood, thus she was the only one who had thought to make the trip back to her uncle’s cabin on the first lonely night of that last December. She stood on the bank of the river bordering the edge of the property, just as her Uncle Arthur had done every winter for all the years of her life, and waited for the first kiss of snowfall before taking a step towards the trees.

 

“Merlin?” she called into the dark forest. “Merlin, I’ve come to bring him home.”

 

Merlin had always liked Freya. She had inherited her mother’s gifts, but none of her temper, and he had spent many happy hours with her when she was a child teaching her everything he could remember about the ways of magic. She was a sweet girl, with a natural affinity for animals and a depth of compassion that had always struck him as unusual in someone so young.

 

But Freya was not Arthur, and though she did her best to comfort Merlin when she helped him to scatter Arthur’s ashes, all the sympathy in the world could not make up for the knowledge that there was no one left now who had known him while he was still alive—and that no matter what he did, Merlin would always end up alone.

 

 

⋆ ❀ ⋆

 

 

The world without Arthur was a cold, bleak place. Merlin sat atop his perch and did not cry at all, watching as the endless snow fell in an icy stream between him and the rest of humanity. Arthur had never made him feel as if he were any less for being what he was, and with Arthur’s hands on him he had always been able to mould himself back into some semblance of a human being, with the same wants and needs, hopes and fears as any other man. But Arthur was gone now, and all Merlin could feel was an empty tundra of grief which seemed determined to draw everything that lived into the vortex of his misery. He did not need to eat or sleep, and he had no interest in ever getting up again, not even to play games in the snow the way the two of them had so often done before. Whole weeks passed in which the skies were nothing but grey fog, and the sun seemed barely to have risen at all, the weak light doing little to eliminate the sheath of frost that had settled over Merlin’s heart.

 

Eventually, however, and almost imperceptibly, as the earth turned the weather began to change, and though Merlin had nothing to do with it—though he could not even admit to ever _wanting_ it—there began to appear patches of a dear, familiar blue amidst the murk, and the worst of the ice slowly began to thaw. Spring was drawing closer, a steady and inexorable increase in warmth, and as the first over-eager buds began to unfurl on the branches of the trees below, Merlin’s months-long slumber was broken by the sound of a voice he knew even better than he knew his own.

 

“You know, _Mer_ lin, if you stay up there like that much longer, I might start to think you actually missed me.”

 

 

⋆ ❀ ⋆

 

 

The icicles which clung to the farmhouse guttering were already beginning to melt, tapering away into glittering points which from this angle reminded Merlin of church spires. Below them, as radiant as he had been on the day that Merlin first kissed him, stood Arthur Pendragon, the first rays of soft spring sunlight catching in the wind-swept strands of his pale hair.

 

“But— _how_?” Merlin asked, already tumbling off the roof with the snow in his excitement. “You could never manage even the smallest scrap of magic. How could they possibly have brought you back?”

 

“Something about a balance, they said.” Arthur reached out to twine their fingers together as Merlin dropped beside him, and Merlin looked down, fascinated as ever by the contrast between his pale, silver skin and Arthur’s golden tan. This was Arthur as Merlin had always known him, young and strong but with the depth of ages in his eyes, and when he smiled Merlin could feel the heat of the summer sun against the back of his neck. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, to everyone there is a season, et cetera, et cetera.”

 

“That’s the Third Law of Motion, you absolute twat,” Merlin said, and to his mortification there were tears prickling at the back of his eyes. “And did you just misquote the Bible at me?”

 

“Maybe.” Arthur waved this away as unimportant. “But the point is, I’m here. You’re here. There’s nothing to keep us apart anymore.”

 

“There are the seasons,” Merlin pointed out, feeling half hysterical. “There’s—I don’t know, blizzards and droughts and—and sunshowers. If we’re meant to be opposites, doesn’t that mean we’ll never be allowed up here at the same time?”

 

But Arthur only shot him that old, smug grin, the one that meant he knew something Merlin did not. “You don’t understand, do you, Merlin?” he said. “You’re not bound anymore; you can go wherever you like. And since somewhere in the world it is always summer—”

 

“—and somewhere it is always winter—”

 

“—that means we will always be able to stay together. All year long, if that’s what you want.”

 

“All year long,” Merlin repeated in a whisper. The last vestiges of old age had burned off him like fog and his heart felt lighter than air, fluttering in his chest like a funnel of snow flurries dancing in the breeze. “You’re serious?”

 

“As a hurricane,” Arthur said, with an affectionate smile. He tugged Merlin close and kissed him soundly, and for once Merlin gave in without a fight, yielding to the comforting warmth of Arthur’s arms around him. It had been decades since he had felt like this, as if the entire world were aflower with unfolding possibilities, and he need only choose the joys he wanted to be able to pluck them from the vine.

 

“I won’t ever leave you by choice, Merlin,” Arthur murmured into his hair, echoing the words Merlin had said to him so long ago. “You know that.”

 

And for the first time since the night that he’d heard Freya's voice calling him back, Merlin actually believed it to be true.

 

 

⋆ ❀ ⋆

 

 

The spring was a particularly mild one that year. The weather went back and forth a few times, as if summer and winter were bickering over which one ought to come first, but everybody remarked on the sheer number of buds and blossoms that sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere, once the winter snows had begun to thaw for good.

 

Inside Freya Pendragon’s Islington flat, Morgana Pendragon’s youngest daughter smiled to herself, and told her own children stories about their Great-Uncle Arthur, who had fallen in love with a snow prince and been whisked off to fairyland to live forever and ever. No one believed her, of course—after all, the woman had been known to hold conversations with cats—but it could not be denied that, by some stroke of unexpected good fortune, the flowers on her balcony were always brilliant and blooming, and the path leading up to her front door was never beset with snow, even in the depths of winter. Occasionally, and without anyone ever understanding how she did it, the frost that lined her windowpanes in autumn would form pictures, illustrating her stories with figures dressed in delicate strands of ice and snow, every limb as fragile as lace and twice as beautiful.

 

But, of course, these were only parlour tricks, and in the grand scheme of things no one but her youngest son, Gilli, ever paid much attention. After all, it wasn’t as if it were usual to sit up at nights, watching a silvery prince dance together with his soulmate across the windowsill, and it wasn't as if anyone else would have realised that what they were witnessing was all but incontrovertible proof that magic had once more returned to the world.

 

At least, not _yet_. But the winds of change had already begun to blow, bringing with them the sweetness of the summer country, and in the end it could only ever be a matter of time.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A note about seasons:** the early Anglo-Saxon calendar is typically thought to have recognised only two seasons, summer and winter, which is the basic framework this fic is based on. The title, _sumerlang_ , is from the Old English word meaning "(a day) long as in summer."
> 
> For added feels, read while listening to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwfYHVJHMOA) from the musical _Camelot_.
> 
> “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.” — Vincent van Gogh


End file.
